Paint the Picture

 

When I was managing a chain of automotive shops one of the things that  I became aware of was that I constantly had to demonstrate to the manager that his  performance was not up to our standards.  Over time I decided that what we  really needed was a way to demonstrate clearly our standards. For example what we thought was a clean shop, and  organized inventory, a clean lobby, fresh coffee, and even a clean and  properly worn uniform. It may sound silly to you but what I actually did was I  went to one of our shops that was messy and I took some Polaroid photos of the lobby the stock room the employees the shop floor the tool  trays and several other areas within the store then of the  parking lot, all in what we considered unacceptable condition.

Then we cleaned the place up so that it was sparkling clean and organized the
way we wanted it to look all the time.  I then took the same set of these pictures and put them in  a three ring binder with little sleeves that you can slide the pictures  in.

On the left-hand page you would be looking at a dirty shop, on the exact
opposite right-hand page you would be looking at the pictures of what we
considered was a clean shop.

We laid this  out section by section so that there can be no mistake. Then if I called on the  phone and said to the manager is your lobby clean he knew exactly what I meant.  This was a big step in the right direction allowing us to create  a standardized definition of our company  standards. We made this book part of our management training program so our  managers were exposed to this book for two weeks before they ever got a key to  his shop.

You can take  this concept and use it in any business and I even went so far as to type a detailed  description of how we greeted customers on the parking lot. We had developed a particular practice or approach  because we didn’t want the customer to have to get out of their car and wander  around and wait for somebody to say “yes, can I help you?” It was our policy  that the manager greeted you in the parking lot as you were getting out of your  car.

I went into detail to explain how to walk up to the customer in a quick
manner and yet stop a few feet short of the car and pause while they got out so
as to not make them feel crowded or uncomfortable. ( there is a lot of theory about people and their personal space) I won’t go on and on with  this detail but the point is that we painted a mental picture of what we  expected and how we wanted to do our business and because of that we grew from  12 stores to 270.

Your  customers are so precious and so valuable, and next to them your employees are the second most precious and valuable resource you can have. So why would you want to take a chance that your second most valuable resource would destroy your most valuable resource.

This doesn’t even make sense and yet so many people  will just hire someone; tell them this is your job and just turn him loose to  fail. It doesn’t take that much time and trouble to generate a system in your company that paints the picture whether it’s a video, a letter, or photographs. It is all about “Moments of Truth” or every time or situation that could go wrong and cause a customer to decide not to do business with you or your company! Plan your operation like you would your wedding reception.  Another thought is that if your business is the kind that you are not seeing customers at the physical location then focus the same kind of attention on your employees. Plan those moments too!